13 signs your sermon isn’t going well

I posted this before, but many of my new readers haven’t seen this, and it fits with the first law of blogging: humor always attracts more hits than serious. So, in a shameless attempt to boost my blog traffic for one day, here is a “Top Ten List” I created for our seminary banquet a few years ago (I enlarged it to 13 so every member of the faculty could read one).

13. Your associate pastor is warming up in the bullpen.

12. The praise band begins playing you off the stage.

11. When asked to read from the King James Version, you involuntarily blush every time you say the word “ass.”

10. The congregation is filling in the blanks of your outline before you get there.

9. You think the lyrics to a bluegrass song are really connecting with your audience.

8. When you pause for dramatic effect, several people giggle.

7. Your cell phone starts ringing, and you answer it.

6. The person signing for the deaf just pulled on mittens.

5. When the children are dismissed to junior church, most of their parents go, too.

4. Your sermon took shape over a glass of wine and volume three of Left Behind.

3. Your interpreter just rolled his eyes and put your last statement in air quotes.

21 Comments

Those are funny. I may have been guilty of number 10. At one church I would regularly hear/see ladies cutting their fingernails. At that same church 3 or 4 digital watch alarms would go off, within seconds of each other right around 11:55 (get me out-a-here the roast is burning). People used to play pencil and paper games like tic-tac-toe and capture the squares. Most have graduated to handheld video games, texting, etc… Shut down your church’s Wi-Fi or password protect it. As you look out at the congregation, not all heads staring intently downward are studying the Bible passage you just referenced. A guy staring down, with one hand to the side of his head, is hiding an ear bud. The best one I’ve ever seen was at a church I visited. It was a lady sitting in the front row knitting on a sweater or something (no way she was going to finish it within a 20 minute sermon). That church had a nightclub quality rock band. At the end of the service an elder went up to dismiss with prayer, and his starting line was ”Lord we know you are a God who likes to party…..”. Laugh, then cry.

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